


The Claims of Higher Education 
on our Christian Youth. 



ETHELBERT D. WARFIELD, LL.D., 

PRESIDENT OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 



The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. 

An Historical Study, by Ethelbert D. 
Warfield, 2nd edition, pp. 203. Pub- 
lished by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New 
York. Price, I1.25. 

Christian Education. 

Inaugural Address as President of La- 
fayette College, by Ethelbert D. War- 
field. Price, 25 Cents. 

The Evolution of the University. 

Inaugural Address as President of 
Miami University (1889), by Ethelbert 
D. Warfield. Price, 25 Cents. 

The Place of Athletics in College Life. 

A Plea and a Protest. By Ethelbert 
D. Warfield. Price, 25 Cents. 



The Claims of Higher Education 
on our Christian Youth. 

AN ADDRESS 

Delivered at the Presbyterian Rally of the Christian Endeavor Convention , 
Boston, July 1 1, 1891;. 



ETHELBERT DUDLEY WARFIEI.D, LL.D., 

PRESIDENT OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE. 



EASTON, PA.: 

LAFAYETTE PRESS. 

1895. 



Reprinted from The New York Observer. 



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The Claims of Higher Education 
on our Christian Youth. 



THERE was a time when higher education was the 
privilege of the few. Not merely in that far dis- 
tant day when class distinctions, or the claims of the 
church, alone opened the door of learned institutions, but 
in a time far nearer to us in fact or in spiritual sympathies. 
In the youth of our own fathers, even it was not every 
son of the rich and cultivated who was given the oppor- 
tunity for colleges training, far less the children of the 
less wealthy or less cultivated. In the homes of the 
better to-do citizens of the cities one son who looked 
forward to a profession might naturally enough go to col- 
lege ; in the homes of struggling, God-fearing, brave- 
hearted men and women the ablest or best beloved of 
many would be sent to college and kept there by the 
self-sacrificing labor, not merely of father and mother, 
but of sisters and brothers as well. Higher education 
was a prize for one out of many. Even to enter the con- 
test unusual promise was necessary. To win the goal, 
perseverance, devotion and long continued struggle with 
poverty were inevitable. The boy from the country 



4 

town who was away at college, v/as followed by the 
anxious solicitude and generous pride, not merely of his 
own household, but of the entire community, and hon- 
ors conferred on him were regarded as civic crowns for 
all his fellow townsmen. All who have read that de- 
lightful little volume of Scottish stories, "Beside the 
Bonnie Brier Bush," will recall the beautiful opening 
sketch of Domsie, the village schoolmaster, and his 
favorite pupil. Its story is the story of many another 
town, and many another master and pupil. Would to 
God that such devotion to a high and noble life were 
more universal ! 

But to-day the doors of school and college and univer- 
sity are open wide. No boy or girl who desires a 
higher education need fail to obtain it. The path that 
was once narrow and stony is now broad and smooth. 
A thousand aids are open to all, a thousand voices are 
begging our youth to come and take the rich feast that 
has been prepared by the loving generosity of christian 
founders, a thousand rich rewards in prizes, fellowships, 
honorable callings, glorious opportunities for service 
await the successful seekers after knowledge. I^et us 
not refuse to see the truth. The opportunities for higher 
training have increased a thousand-fold and the number 
who avail themselves of them has increased in due pro- 
portion. Not only so ; the standards of college life have 
improved, the beauty and nobility of youthful enthusi- 



asm for God and his truth have come to be more highly 
esteemed, and the pursuit of truth and the lives of the 
seekers have been made more consonant. We have lost 
some of the old sense of the rarity and preciousness of 
the opportunity, but we have gained in the zeal with 
which the opportunity is seized on. There is less glori- 
fication of a college education, and a far greater realiza- 
tion of the importance of making a college education 
but a stepping stone to usefulness. You hear much 
more to-daj^ of college athletics than of college studies ; 
of college pranks than of college prayer-meetings ; but 
go inside of any of our century-old colleges and compare 
the life to-day with that of long ago, and the universal 
testimony will be that there is more study and more de- 
votion to duty to-day than ever before ; that where once 
it was common to break up college prayer-meetings by 
college pranks, now college prayer-meetings have ban- 
ished all the more common and brutal college pranks to 
the limbo of the well-forgotten. The vital christian life 
of our youth bred in constant christian activity is now 
the controlling factor in college life. College life is less 
and less a thing apart, and more and more a preparatory 
training for a larger life beyond — a preparatory training 
which is thoroughly understood to carry in itself the 
moulding influences of the future, and to condition the 
usefulness of the future by its own character. No longer 
does a young man imagine that he can sow wild oats in 



college, and reap good grain in after years. A greater 
publicity rules the college life. It is true that athletics 
and pranks occupy the larger space in the secular press, 
but it is also true that the athletics are largely influenced 
by the christian students, and the pranks frowned on by 
them, and that Northfield conferences and Christian 
Endeavor conventions are attended by far more Chris- 
tian college men than are to be found in any other than 
praiseworthy affairs. 

The christian college is, then, quite as much the gath- 
ering place of our christian youth as ever. But besides 
this it should have a strong personal attraction for every 
young christian. Every christian college has written 
over its door the word "Opportunity." Your oppor- 
tunity, young christian, whether you are boy or girl. 
God has given you a life to live. What shall it be? 
Youth has bright dreams and fair ideals. Youth longs 
for one thing, Opportunity. Youth cannot afford to sit 
still like Mr. Micawber, and wait for ' ' something to turn 
up." Opportunity must often be sought, must even be 
made, but here it lies right athwart your path. There 
are many kinds of opportunity ; the only kind I would 
speak of at this time, indeed, the only opportunity worth 
speaking of at all, is the opportunity for christian ser- 
vice. Every generation has its own shibboleths. It 
matters little how we phrase the truth, so we are sure 
the substance is the same. Duty, love, God and His 



glory ! All these words may mean the same to us. The 
great thing is to fully comprehend the great all-embrac- 
ing fact, that christian service is needed to give expres- 
sion to christian faith, and that christian service means 
the fulfilment of our duty to self, fellow men and God. 
So wide is this horizon, so far-reaching the activity that 
will be needed to fill its compass, that nothing short of 
the highest training will suflBce for its accomplishment. 
God has already pointed out that our first duty is to self. 
Here is one of the points upon which superficial thinkers 
constantly go astray. No man can help others till 
he has fitted himself to be helpful. No man can help 
save others till he has found Christ. No man can teach 
till he has learned how to teach through being taught 
himself. The great curse of our times is the tendency 
of men half -prepared for life's duties to rush into the 
largest fields of labor. Immature, half -equipped, ignor- 
ant of their own ignorance, vainly assuming undertak- 
ings of the loftiest character, they become the sport of 
every passing wind of opinion and drag down others 
with them. A man's first duty to himself is to prepare 
himself, not quickly, but thoroughly. The question is 
not how soon he gets to work, but how good the work 
he does when he gets to work. 

Each man's first duty is to prepare himself thoroughly 
— for what ? Here again the question is of self, and yet 
now with a distinct look ahead to fellow men and up to 



God. With only self before us we can unhesitatingly 
say — for the highest attainable work. When we come 
to ask, What is highest? — looking beyond self we judge 
not for self, but for the service of men and the glory of 
God. When we come again to ask, What is the high- 
est attainable? we must judge with all humility, and yet 
— counting God our helper — without cowardice. Such 
preparation for such high ends demands time and pa- 
tience. God sent His prophets to the wilderness — what 
a waste of time and force, some of our too eager youth 
will say — yet they learned deeper lessons of God in the 
desert fastnesses than were taught in the schools of human 
philosophy. Yet others God set in schools of human 
thought; Moses in the schools of Egypt, Saul in the 
school of the Rabbins. The Lord himself did not begin His 
ministry till He was about thirty years of age. A ma- 
tured mind in a fully developed body is essential to the 
best results, and these are what our colleges aim to give. 
The American college of to-day is not a fortuitous 
aggregation of educational influences, but a combination 
of the carefully chosen and well tested means and meth- 
ods of making not merely scholars, but men. Under 
healthful conditions of growth the best ideas of all coun- 
tries have been tried and so far as they have proved sat- 
isfactory adopted. The result is a place of highly organ- 
ized teaching in which, with a generally strong current 
of advice and direction, young men are free to choose 



courses and studies which will fit them for any kind of 
usefulness. There is no limit to the inclusiveness of the 
college. Side by side, as in the town or city, young 
men fit themselves for the learned professions, the tech- 
nical pursuits, for business, farming, or any other voca- 
tion. They are taught first, and before all else, that 
training is necessary. The man, his mind, his moral 
nature, must be developed before he can be useful. The 
man cannot become a specialist before his moral nature 
is taught the necessity of labor, that earnest, devoted, 
laborious, fatiguing, exhausting work, alone wins mas- 
tery ; nor without first conquering the mental vices of 
assumption, prejudice, insufficient generalization, etc., 
by carefully chosen exercises in mental gymnastics. The 
higher teaching of the class room is constantly supple- 
mented, moreover, by the often hard, but valuable, 
training of college life, with its struggles and tempta- 
tions, its high pressure democracy, its keen criticism, 
pitiless ridicule, hatred of sham and rousing enthusi- 
asm for what it believes in ; the ball field and the debat- 
ing society, the Christian Association and the secret fra- 
ternity, prove the metal of which manhood is being 
made, brightening the true, and finding the flaws in the 
poor material. 

The courses in college have been formulated under 
the advice of the most successful men in the various 
careers ; college life has grown up among earnest, vig- 



lO 

orous young people under the direction of teachers who 
were students of life and character as well as books. Is 
it not natural that in each sphere of future usefulness 
the road that leads through college will be the shortest, 
the smoothest and the best ? 

If we press the duty of highest usefulness one step 
farther we may well claim that every young christian 
owes no small obligation to his fellow men and to his 
I^ord, not merely to prepare himself for some useful 
work thoroughly, but also to choose the very highest 
possible work. I cannot take the time that would be 
needed to discuss the proposition, but I do not hesitate 
to claim for the ministry the highest right in every 
young christian's thought. Then comes the healing art 
with its noble opportunities, the cause of justice wherein 
the christian virtues must ever shine, teaching in all its 
varieties, and the other callings in due order, all low or 
high according to the powers expended on them, and 
the purpose in them, whether only selfish seeking after 
wealth or ease or influence, or the glory of God. If the 
claims of the ministry are not heeded, if no call to it is 
heard, and some other calling is adopted, it must still 
be remembered that there is room for christian service 
in every life, and that youth is the time for preparation 
for such service. It will be made richer and fuller by 
higher training in the languages and histories of man- 
kind in their sciences and philosophy, in all that has 



II 

been thought and done since God set man in the midst 
of his creation. Such equipment is to be had best 
through the college, — for some of the highest callings 
only through the college, — and such equipment is neces- 
sary not merely for the profevSsional man and the scholar, 
but in this day a thorough education is so free that it is 
the ordinar)'- portion of every earnest worker and think- 
er. It becomes, therefore, the especial duty of the chris- 
tian man to know as much as may be known of God's 
providence in His dealing with man in history and na- 
ture. Out of such a training flow a larger human sym- 
pathy, a deeper knowledge of the needs of men and how 
to meet them, and above all, a fuller comprehension of 
God's ways among men. Thus is bred the large and 
comprehending mind, the fervid and hopeful heart, the 
intelligent and earnest deed, and man comes more and 
more to strive to improve every gift of God that he may 
use every faculty for the service of man and the glory of 
God. 

Ethelbert D. Warfiei<d. 



LAFAYETTE COLLEGE 

AT EASTON, PENNA. 



I^afayette College is beautifully situated on a bold 
bluff overlooking the junction of the lychigh and Dela- 
ware rivers. It is about two hours distant from New 
York and Philadelphia and is easily reached by the I^e- 
high Valley, New Jersey Central, Pennsylvania, Read- 
ing, and Delaware, I^ackawanna & Western Railway 
systems. It is well equipped with twenty-seven build- 
ings of various kinds, apparatus, libraries, etc. The 
curricula consist of seven courses, the Classical, I^atin 
Scientific, General Scientific, Civil, Mining and Elec- 
trical Engineering, and Chemistry. For catalogues and 
other information address the President, or 

S:ei.DEN J. Coffin, Ph.D., 

Registrar. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 775 970 3 




